Thicker than water
by A. Meril
Summary: Sirius trusts Andromeda with some of the most important secrets of his life.
1. December 1975

Notes: Naturally, it's all JKR's, I don't own anything. :)

* * *

December 1975

"Oh, Merlin. Ted! Ted, come out here, quick!"

Every sensation seems intensified: every inch of the concrete, every damp grain of it scrapes his hand and leaving an angry, raw mark. Rain freezing on his blood-covered cheek.

"What is-- Bloody _hell_."

"He's left them. Sirius, can you hear me?"

_You're dead to us. Never forget, little cousin. _

"Come on, Andi, let's get him inside."

Dragged in, feet bumping against the doorframe, into the warm hallway. A vent blasts air on his feverish face, parches his mouth.

"I've got the door, here--"

"Mum? Daddy?"

"Oh, _fuck_."

"Ted, watch your mouth! Dora, go back to sleep."

"Mummy--"

"_Now_."

A cool, gentle hand, a worried murmur. Charms flicking around his face, voices sliding back and forth.

"What was it?"

"Cutting Curses, probably the Cruciatus... Look at his arm."

"Is that--"

"Yes. Same one. It'll take at least a week to fully heal."

"Mummy..."

"Dora. Bed, _now_. Ted..."

"Sirius will be all right, firefly. Back to bed."

Cracked-open eyes. Andromeda on her knees beside him, dark hair straggling over her face, smudgy circles beneath her eyes. She slices a cut across her palm, sticks her wand in it and traces it over his arm as a string of hateful-sounding words pour from her mouth. The spell is ugly, consuming, wrenching bone and sinew back into place as he feels his cousin's energies crackling through him.

He watches her blood sink into his skin, and light explodes: white-hot, painful, and then blackness.

* * *

Ted's sprawled on a worn armchair, snoring, with Dora cuddled in his lap. He doesn't look capable of any harm, really, and Sirius almost forgets how fearsome Ted can get if either Andromeda or Dora is in danger.

A fretful noise from his left, and he sees Andromeda watching him. She's leaning against the wall, with an unnatural waxy quality to her skin. "You all right?" Her voice is whisper-faint.

"You--" He breaks into a gasp of pain, reaching over to clutch his ribs. "Last night, you--"

"Don't," she says wearily. "It's a miracle you managed to get here."

He doesn't properly remember how he did, in fact. There was some amount of time in a park, shuddering beneath a tree, and then a blur of streets and harsh lights until he finally recognized Andromeda's front stoop. Somehow.

"I've left them," he says faintly, unnecessarily, and he sees Andromeda crack a smile.

"I knew you would, eventually."


	2. May 1981

May 1981

"Don't move," a voice at his ear says softly, and he feels the wand at his throat. "When we went to Greece, who did we meet at the beach and why did Bella hate her?"

"Eleni Argyris, the Greek Minister's daughter. She was engaged to a Muggle. Announced in _Cassandra's Crystal_ the week before we arrived." The wand is withdrawn. Sirius turns around to see Andromeda, awake and alert.

She has changed so much since he saw her in school. All the lessons of her mother to never appear slovenly or unpolished seem to have vanished: she is in her nightgown, hair pulled back into a sloppy knot, an inkstain on her fingers... Aunt Druella would never have allowed any of those things.

But then he catches the glittering hardness in his cousin's eyes, and he knows that a curse was on the tip of her tongue if he had given the wrong answer.

That, at least, is familiar.

"Good to see you, Sirius," she murmurs, giving him a sudden hug at which he startles; their family had never been a demonstrative one. "What do you want?"

"I protest," he says feelingly, as she locks the door with an oblique wave of her hand. "Why say I'm after something?"

"It's four o'clock in the morning." Her voice is wry but affectionate. "The last time you were here this early, James Potter was bleeding all over my doorstep."

His attempt at levity fades. "I need Uncle Alphard's place, Meda," he says. "A month at most. Can you make me three Allowances?"

Andromeda purses her lips. "You really didn't learn anything from them." It's a cryptic sort of remark.

"'Course not." He gives her a doubtful look.

"Hm." She eyes him curiously. "I always assumed you would have learned something from Aunt, at least."

"You mean it's sealed with..."

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Uncle taught me the spell a long time ago, before I left school," she says. "I'll need to see the three people."

"But there's no way--"

"Then I won't do it."

"This needs to be done soon, as in _tomorrow_ at the latest!" He runs a hand through his hair, frustrated, and starts pacing.

"Wake my husband or daughter and you will itch very strongly in very strange places for a month," Andromeda says pleasantly. "Ted just finished a double shift." A slight shadow crosses her face, and Sirius wonders suddenly if she's fighting her own war, the less glamorous kind, with subtle words and threats instead of enemies who outrightly want you dead.

"Without blood it's breakable," she says, "and I will not deal in shoddy spellwork."

"It's illegal!" Sirius says desperately. "You shouldn't do blood-magic at all!"

His cousin sniffs. "Please. If I didn't have blood-wards on this flat, my dear elder sister could fling curses at us from the street. And don't _you_ lecture me about legality, you flea-bitten hypocrite."

"But..." He pauses pacing, and sits next to her. "Meda, please. For me. Please, please do this. Life or death, please."

"The answer is no, Sirius," Andromeda says wearily. "Anyway, why not have Remus put up some of his wards, he's very--"

"NO!" He practically shouts the word, almost choking on the bitterness of it (_Goddamnit, Remus, why don't you __talk__ to me anymore?_) and is unsurprised when Andromeda Silences him with an almost violent wand movement.

_Sorry?_ he mouths.

His cousin scrutinizes him, and for a few uncomfortable seconds he is back at home under the gimlet eye of his mother; he hopes Meda isn't using that mind-magic on him, doesn't see _James, Lily, Harry, danger!_ screaming through his mind.

"All right. I'll just make them into amulets," Andromeda says finally, lifting the Silencing Charm. "No blood. But I will need to know the age and sex of each person in order to make the charm bind as tightly as possible. But I warn you, Sirius: you're not completely shielded unless you're tied into the special wards by blood. If my amulets are removed for even a second, the protections on these people will have a crack in it."

"It'll have to do. And no one can know... You swear you'll never tell anyone?"

"Do you really need to ask?"

"...No."

"That's settled then. Come on, sit and have some tea. Blackberry this week. Oh, it won't _kill_ you," she adds impatiently, seeing his apprehensive expression. "I'm better at it now, Ted's mum showed me the Muggle way."


End file.
